Our Team

Tina Grotzer

Principal Investigator

Tina Grotzer is a member of the Faculty of Education at Harvard University, a Principal Research Scientist at Project Zero, and a faculty member at the Center for Health and the Global Environment at Harvard School of Public Health. She is also a Principal Investigator on the EcoLEARN team at the Harvard Graduate School of Education.

Her research identifies ways in which understandings about the nature of causality impact our ability to deal with complexity in our world. It has the following strands: 1) How reasoning about causal complexity interacts with our decisions in the everyday world and public understanding of science given the architecture of the human mind and; 2) How causal understanding develops in supported contexts and interacts with science learning (with the goal of developing curriculum to support deep understanding). This work is funded primarily by the National Science Foundation (NSF). Grotzer was awarded a Career Award from NSF in 2009 and a Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Enginners by the United States Government in 2011.

Previously, Tina was a teacher and district-level program director in the Arlington Public Schools, MA and a teacher at Poughkeepsie Day School, a PreK-12 school committed to observing children and developing emergent, individualized curriculum. She received her doctorate and master’s from Harvard University and her BA in Developmental Psychology from Vassar College. She was a student at Dutchess Community College for two years and transferred to Vassar with encouragement from Dean Colton Johnson (as he developed what would later become the formal "Exploring Transfer Program" for students who otherwise might not have the opportunity to attend an elite, four year college) for which she is eternally grateful.

Websites

Lynneth Solis

Lynneth is a graduate of the Mind, Brain, and Education program and a current doctoral student in Human Development and Education at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. Her research interests focus on the study of conceptual development, particularly what are the cognitive processes that lead children to evermore complex conceptions of phenomena in the world? And, how can adults—educators and parents—best support children in the acquisition of deep understanding? In the lab, she is involved in projects looking at the way in which students best learn and understand complex causal models in science learning. One study investigates young children's interpretation of mutually causal phenomena (as in symbiosis), in which the cause-effect interaction pattern is not unidirectional.

Shane Tutwiler

Shane served as a radiation health physicist and nuclear water chemist aboard fast-attack submarines before transitioning into science education, earning his B.S. in Science Education, summa cum laude, from Temple University. He subsequently earned a Master of Education and Doctorate of Education from the Harvard Graduate School of Education. Shane has taught high school math and science in the United States and Taiwan, as well as courses on quantitative research methods and assessment at Harvard and MIT. Shane lives in West Hartford, Connecticut with his wife, daughters, and cats.

Websites

Y. Debbie Liu

Y. Debbie Liu is a doctoral candidate at the Harvard University Graduate School of Education. She has worked at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Center for Cancer Research and has a research background in bioinformatics, drug delivery, and synthetic biology. She is a graduate of Wellesley College and Boston University’s Graduate Program in Cellular and Molecular Biology, and holds a Master of Education from Harvard University. Her research investigates emerging thinking patterns of scientists working at the frontiers of 21st century science, and its implications for the nature of science and science education.

Megan Powell Cuzzolino

Megan is a doctoral candidate in the Human Development and Education concentration at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. She previously worked at UCP for four years, first as an undergraduate at Harvard College and then as a master's student at HGSE. After earning her Ed.M., Megan taught grades 1-6 science at an independent school in the D.C. area, and then worked as a Science Education Analyst at the National Science Foundation. Megan is interested in how children and adults understand, and develop attitudes toward, science.

Maleka Gramling

Maleka Donaldson Gramling is a doctoral student in Human Development and Education at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. Broadly, she is interested in cognitive science, neuroscience and psychology research that can deepen our understanding of how students learn in classrooms. More specifically, she is exploring the effects of making mistakes and receiving feedback from others while learning, along with the implications for classroom teaching and learning. Maleka holds an A.B. in Biology from Harvard College, and an Ed.M. in Human Development and Psychology from HGSE. Prior to her graduate studies, she worked with elementary students as a Kindergarten lead teacher, tutor, and science instructor.

Amber Boyd

Amber K. Boyd worked as a strategic planning consultant/analyst, marketing consultant and graphic designer before answering her life’s call to study the mind. She completed her Master’s in Mind, Brain and Education at the Harvard Graduate School of Education in 2014 and plans to pursue doctoral studies. Amber is most interested in what cognitive science, psychology, neuroscience and sociology can tell us about the development and deconstruction of long-held beliefs. She is also focused on transmuting scientific research into public art to make science more accessible to the general public. Amber currently works on two projects at the lab: Causal Learning in the Classroom and EcoMobile.